🏳️‍🌈🏺2-Gay in History🏺🇮🇳

In Khajuraho, central India, there are twenty-five surviving temples, built by the Chandela kings. Gods, dancers, couples, & on the plinth of the Lakshmana temple, finished in 954, a man receiving oral sex from another man. Lesbian love on the walls. A sexually explicit working temple that celebrates all kinds of sexuality.

Holy & titillating, what else should one expect from the place that gave us the Kama Sutra.

In the ninth chapter of the second part, it describes 'tritiya-prakriti'—third nature—noting some are feminine in dress & manner, while others have beards, mustaches, & muscle. It describes techniques, positions & bottoming advice, but also emphasizes affection & trust.

The foundational medical text 'Sushruta Samhita,’ covers five 'kliba,' or desires, of this third sex—oral, musk, voyeurism, bottoming—but the fifth, 'shandha,' presents more feminine: walking, talking, or dressing in non-traditional or less masculine ways. It very clearly says each desire is inborn, existing from birth, though it blames conception position and testicular temperature as the cause of queerness.

The Kama Sutra also talk about 'svairini,' women who live apart from men or only with another woman, then of course gives some pleasure advice for one or two women.

Hindu law also treated queer people relatively well. Any non-vaginal sex was impure rather than evil or criminal. The 'Manusmriti' penalty for a man who has sex with a man is a bath with your clothes on, the same penance prescribed for having sex in the daytime. The 'Arthashastra' charges a small fine—a proverbial parking ticket.

Straight people actually had it worse, for once. The 'Manusmriti' brands adulterers & runs them out of town. The 'Arthashastra' prescribes mutilation if they are both low-born, unless they crossed caste lines, then gruesome death.

For generations before the Mughals came, India had barely made a distinction between straight & queer. Little wonder when so many gods in Hindu myth are gender-bending. We'll cover some of those stories soon.

Illustrated versions of the Kama Sutra are below along with the temple decorations. Meta obviously wouldn’t allow me to post most of these.